3.19.2013

Jim has been an integral part of the Columbus food culture long before the word sustainable was forced down our gullet. His innumerable contributions include: writing for Taco Trucks Columbus, Alt.Eats.Columbus, and WCBE Foodcast, judging competitive cooking, organizing the Pizza Grand Prix I-VI at Wild Goose Creative, going to school for post graduate training in hot dog science. He scours every culinary niche of the city exploring the food, the experienceand the historical context of that food for us to enjoy on CMH Gourmand. Each post introduces us to good food and the inspiring people who prepare it. He recognizes the good in our community and diplomatically spares us the rare disappointing experiences. I don't take his queues only to find a good meal, but to learn more about Columbus through food. We all benefit from Jim's past and continued efforts to educate us (there are also exhaustive pursuits of donuts and dagwoods).

CMHGourmand is bigger than any award, but this would be a nice way to express thanks for his efforts. I hope you'll consider a vote (you need only your Facebook login to vote, he is under the category People & Community, which is apt, he's as much about community & people as he is food).

3.06.2013

Once in a while I get interested in slow rise/pre-ferments/poolish/sour dough, etc. type breads. A small amount of yeast and long rise, there's a billion or so ways to do this. The trickiest part of these loaves is the proof, the final rise prior to launching your work into the oven. Too long a proof, the loaf crashes or comes out pale, too short and it comes out dense.

The duration of proof is dependent on the environment, especially the constantly changing temperature and humidity over the course of the day or from season to season. I wanted to find a metric to help me reliably determine the optimal proof time. Any homebrewer who's nursed a fermentation along won't be surprised that yeast fermentation rates over time look generally like this, so I thought I'd try using a bubbler as a cheap gas flowmeter on a slow rise dough to try to differentiate the rate of CO2 evolution over time. If successful, I could begin to make better predictions. The simplistic test of poking the dough with your finger and seeing how much it springs back is inadequate for a 1-a-day baker. It works if you gain precision and experience from baking 2,000 loaves a day, if you bake 1 a day, you'll never realize precision.

Here's my apparatus and a video of it in action. I'll refer back to this post as I gather results.